Assessing the Safety of Your Poker Site
Play Poker » Assessing the Safety of Your Poker Site
Online poker is a multibillion dollar industry today. Hundreds of thousands of people play in various poker rooms across the globe every day. However, there are a lot of people who would like to play online poker for real money but do not do so because they are not sure about the safety of the financial transactions that take place on the internet, or are not sure about the credibility of the poker site. Here are a few tips that will help you in assessing the safety of an online poker room.
Licensing
The first and the most important thing to consider is the licensing of a poker room. The site needs to operate from a place where gambling is legal and should have the license to operate from the concerned authority. There are many sites out there simply present to make some quick money. Any good poker site will display the license on a prominent page of the site. You should also check on the said authority’s site whether the company under consideration has been given the license or not. Kahnawake, Gibraltar, Malta, and United Kingdom are some of the governments that give out licenses for gambling.
Software
The games you play at an online poker room are played through software. The cards that show up are also decided by this software. A random number generator (RNG) is used to decide which card will be dealt to which player. That is why it is very important for you to choose a site that uses trustworthy software. Companies like Realtime gaming, Microgaming, and PlayTech are famous for their software and many sites are a part of their network.
Customer support
You may have some questions about the safety of the poker room you plan to join. Some of them maybe answered through the certificates available on the pages of the site, but certain others might still remain unanswered. In such cases, you should use the customer service provided by the site. Any good poker room will have a customer service department that should answer all you queries.
Financial security
The most important safety concern for anyone about to join a poker room is the financial security provided by the site. You will be making many monetary transactions and you would want your money to be handled safely. Consider the encryption used by the company. Most of them use 128-bit or 256-bit SSL encryption. These encryption standards are very advanced and almost impossible to break.
When it comes to monetary transactions in real money poker, one of the best ways to gauge a poker room is by the kind of banking options offered. Most of the good poker rooms offer a lot of choices for making deposits. Read the terms and conditions regarding the cash outs and bonus withdrawals, as some sites are not very clear about them.
Certification
When you play at an online poker room, you would want to make sure that the games are fair. If the site is certified by a regulatory authority like eCogra you can be sure that the poker room is being run fairly. Many sites also publish their payout percentages, which are audited by independent companies. When it comes to software quality, you should ensure that the company has certification for the random number generators used by an organization like TST Labs.
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